The Hollywood Reporter announced yesterday that Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska (just in case you didn’t see that above) have all joined the cast of the novel adaptation The Wettest County in the World, the next film from director John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road). Read more after the break.

The four newcomers to the project join the previously cast Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy.

The Wettest County in the World is based on the novel of the same name by Matt Borundant, who in turn based his book on the true story of his relatives. I’ll reprint the synopsis of the book from our previous article on Hardy and LaBeouf’s casting; thanks to /Film:

In 1928, a pair of thieves accost Bondurant’s real life great-uncle Forrest at his Franklin County, Va., restaurant. They’re after a large cache of bootlegging money and end up cutting Forrest’s throat. The story of his survival and his trek to a hospital 12 miles away has taken on mythical proportions by the time Sherwood Anderson arrives in Franklin County in 1934 to research a magazine piece on the area’s prolific moonshiners. Soon after Anderson’s arrival, two anonymous men appear at the same hospital, one with legs meticulously shattered from ankle to hip, the other one castrated, with the by-products of the deed deposited in a jar of moonshine. The arc of the story lies between the attack on Forrest and that on the two men.

And word on who’s playing who:

Pearce will play an overly violent deputy who comes down hard on the Bondurants while Oldman will play a gangster who engages the boys to deliver alcohol.

Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right) plays LeBeouf’s love interest, a local Mennonite girl. Clarke (TV’s Chicago Code) is playing the brother to LaBeouf and Hardy.

This sounds like a great new film for Hillcoat; The Proposition is one of the best Westerns I’ve seen, and The Road was a calm, thoughtful take on the over-done post-apocalypse genre (although fell victim to some rather misleading trailers). A gangster film will add to a nice sense of variety. He’s getting together a hell of a cast here, with some great actors; but as usual, I’m mostly looking forward to seeing what the brilliant Gary Oldman will bring to his role.

The Wettest County in the World is being adapted for the screen by musician Nick Cave, who also co-wrote Hillcoat’s debut Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, and scripted The Proposition. He composed the scores for The Proposition and The Road too (the latter of which was beautiful).

This is yet another film to get excited for, I guess. Filming is scheduled to begin on February 28th.